My journey to the presidential inauguration started with the shooting in Newtown, which is about 20 minutes away from my school -- Mill Hill School in Fairfield -- where I am in the fifth grade.

The school was in lockdown and there were police officers. It was my first lockdown at school. It was a very scary time. When I got home, I discussed the lockdown and the shooting with my mother. We decided that the answer was not to live in fear, but to help prevent things like this from happening again. To be part of the solution, you have to understand the process; how things are done and what is being done about the problem right now.

This is how my trip to the inauguration came to be. I came to hear what President Obama believed to be the major concerns of this country and how he planned to address them in his next term. However, I came away with much more.

One thing that did not hit me until I arrived in Washington, D.C., was how much care, effort and planning must have gone into putting the inauguration together. An estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people were in attendance. The streets were closed and thousands of police officers were in sight. I can't imagine the number of hours that went into planning the security, the traffic control, the decorations, the set-up and clean-up.

Everything ran so smoothly, at least to the public eye!

It was amazing to witness how many people traveled to see Obama take his oath of office. They were there to show their faith in him and that they believed in his message.

While there, we stood next to a couple that traveled from Hawaii to watch the inauguration. Another man had become a U.S. citizen just in time to vote in the 2012 election. He traveled from New York to be a part of this historic event. I could see the pride in his face. Another young man talked about how he did not vote for Obama, but felt it was important to respect the outcome of the election and to show the world that America is united. People from all around the United States find inspiration in the inaugural ceremonies.

I could feel this year's inauguration theme, "Faith in America's Future" come alive. The fact that we woke-up at 3:30 a.m., were standing in freezing temperatures and shivering in the cold for hours alongside more than half a million people was soon forgotten. As soon as the president began to speak, it all disappeared: the cold, the people, and the bags beneath my eyes ... it was suddenly just the president and I. You could feel the excitement and the energy.

President Obama's message was that he strongly believed he could make this country and its children safer and our economy stronger, but he needed our support to make those changes.

To me, the inauguration was more than who was singing the national anthem, the parade or the fancy inaugural balls. It was about the hope for change. It was about people having faith in America's future.